When Howard Dean left office as the governor of Vermont, he took the unusual step of putting a ten-year seal on his official papers: What’s in Howard Dean’s Secret Vermont Files? (Hat tip: Catbert.)

DEAN—WHO HAS BLASTED the Bush administration for excessive secrecy—candidly acknowledged that politics was a major reason for locking up his own files when he left office last January. He told Vermont Public Radio he was putting a 10-year seal on many of his official papers—four years longer than previous Vermont governors—because of “future political considerations… We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time.” “Most of the records are open,” said Dean spokeswoman Tricia Enright, adding there is “absolutely not” a “smoking gun” in those for which Dean has claimed “executive privilege.” Still, Dean’s efforts to keep official papers secret appear unusually extensive. Late last year, NEWSWEEK has learned, Dean’s chief counsel sent a directive to all state agencies ordering them to cull their files and remove all correspondence that bore Dean’s name—and ship them to the governor’s office to be reviewed for “privilege” claims. This removed a “significant number of records” from state files, said Michael McShane, an assistant Vermont attorney general.